By Jim McCarthy Jul 28, 2009 0 comments

Be the Jackie Chan of Live Entertainment

For those of you who don’t know Jackie Chan, he’s a very famous action hero and martial artist, best known in America for the “Rush Hour” series, but even more famous in Asia.

Here’s a truly archetypal Jackie Chan moment.  If you’re pressed for time, skip the first minute or so, and go straight to the fighting.  As you watch it, realize that there’s no CGI here and Jackie does his own stunts:

Could the acting be better? Yes. Absolutely. But the action sequences and the actual physical danger that Chan subjects himself to make it almost irresistible to keep watching.

What makes it so good? It’s Jackie Chan himself. Not only is he both creative and athletically gifted, he also willing to do things and try things that others simply will not do. The payoff is that he became a film legend, creating an entire sub-genre of movies and spawning a world of imitators. Without Jackie Chan, there would never have been a “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” for example.

Once I saw an interview with Chan, wherein the reporter chidingly asked him why he did the crazy things he did on the set and why he would risk his own well-being to make a movie more exciting.

“It’s for the fans,” he said, “just for the fans.”

In other words, he does it for the audience. To delight and astound them. To give them something they haven’t seen before and aren’t expecting, but which comes out of his unique talents and abilities and which he knows they will like.

What has your organization done “for the fans, just for the fans” lately? Perhaps great things. Perhaps it’s not a lens you look through often enough.

But maybe in your next meeting, you ought to ask the question, “What would Jackie Chan do?”

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